


So Still and Discreet

by egocentrifuge



Series: Another We (RandL OC Fics) [8]
Category: Mythical Entertainment, Rhett & Link
Genre: Angst, F/F, Homophobia, Infidelity, gay longing, internalzied homophobia, they're girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-20 21:09:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egocentrifuge/pseuds/egocentrifuge
Summary: “Thought we were gonna go swimming,” Redd says, not an accusation like it could be, just a question wrapped in an observation. Lohn hums around the neck of the bottle as she takes a swig that burns through her, but it burns away the wrong things, leaving her nothing but this damned desire and deviancy.“People’re talking,” Lohn rasps once she stops coughing.“They always do.”“Aboutus,hun.”
Relationships: Lohn Lightning/Redd "Rabbitclaw" Moonshine
Series: Another We (RandL OC Fics) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1309307
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	So Still and Discreet

**Author's Note:**

> this was a commission for capefearless on tumblr, so really, the angst is her fault

Redd’s the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.

Lohn knows it like she knows her own name, like she knows she’s destined for something greater than this podunk town. Lohn knows it as sure as she knows that there’s something that ain’t _right_ about the way she’s called silly and slutty and airheaded for the same things that would get boys praise, deep in her core, unspeakable lest it get her whopped but _true_. And yeah, Lohn knows her appreciation ain’t right - her adoration, her _fixation_ could get more'n just her into trouble. Lohn - everyone knows Lohn’s a floozy, will open her legs for any boy that looks her way with a smile, but Redd - Redd’s different. Quiet, sweet, oblivious. Frigid, according to the boys she’s dated, because she ain’t ever been with any of them. 

Lohn knows Redd don’t much like kissing boys, knows too that she don’t much like anything else to do with them, neither. Wears pretty skirts and distracting dresses for how they feel against her legs, not for any of Harnett Central’s rougher sex. 

Lohn, she likes boys. Likes their faces and their lips and their cocks, if they know how to use them. But she likes Redd, too, more than she should. 

People’re starting to notice.

 _You sure your girlfriend won’t mind?_ Georgie Harold laughs behind the bleachers with a hand down Lohn’s jeans, smiling like he’s made a joke, like he thinks he’s funny and charming and not just a means to an end. Lohn kisses him quiet and rubs herself off around him when it’s clear he ain’t gonna do it for her and drops casual into lunchroom conversation the next day that he’s got warts on his goolies. She don’t mind her name being brought up when the rumor spreads like the flu, and when Georgie sees her in the halls next it ain’t Redd he’s spitting poison at.

Beatrice Miller says it next, words a cloud of smoke between them as they sneak a cigarette in the second floor bathroom: _Ain’t it weird, though? Her always following you around?_

Lohn likes Beatrice, she does. But it don’t stop her from asking if it ain’t weirder, Beatrice going with Henry Diamond when everyone knows he’s screwing his cousin Tabatha. 

Burning bridges comes easier than Lohn ever expected after having spent her life trying to make everyone like her, because when it comes right down to it, there’s only one person whose opinion Lohn cares about.

Redd finds her in the cow pasture drinking stolen gin and sits down with a rustle of pretty skirts on the stone Lohn’s always thought of as _hers_.

“Thought we were gonna go swimming,” Redd says, not an accusation like it could be, just a question wrapped in an observation. Lohn hums around the neck of the bottle as she takes a swig that burns through her, but it burns away the wrong things, leaving her nothing but this damned desire and deviancy.

“People’re talking,” Lohn rasps once she stops coughing.

“They always do.”

“About _us,_ hun.”

Redd tucks a straw colored curl behind her ear and stares down at her sandals, mumbles something Lohn can’t quite understand.

“What?” Lohn says, dumb. Redd looks up at her with a frown.

“I said it don’t bother me,” she repeats, almost angry. Lohn wilts like a cut flower under Redd’s glare and takes her turn gazing down at the dirt.

“You don’t mean that,” Lohn says, though what she means is, _you should, darling, you really should._ Lohn’s relearning what it is to be a pariah, for heads to turn her way then bend together in whispers as soon as she walks on. It ain’t easy, even as easy as the decision to make herself the target had been. But for Redd - well, there ain’t much Lohn wouldn’t do.

Redd don’t repeat herself again, don’t argue. Sits and watches Lohn skull another shot in the boiling wet heat of an April afternoon and asks, small:

“Will you go swimming with me, Lohnnie?”

Lohn’s not numb enough yet for the nickname not to take her breath away. She’s bleeding when she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. 

“We can’t do that shit anymore,” Lohn tells her, gentle as she can. It ain’t gentle enough; when Lohn picks herself up enough to stumble away, Redd’s eyes are the color of her name and she’s as small as Lohn’s ever seen her.

It’s enough to make Lohn stop, waver.

“We can still,” Lohn starts, stops. “It’s just - you know why we gotta - ”

Her already broken voice abandons her when Redd stands up without another word and sets off running across the field the way she came.

Lohn calls out, she swears she does, but Redd doesn’t look back.

The story Lohn comes up with that weekend when she’s sober enough to think straight vanishes into smoke when she gets to school on Monday. All the work she put into a rumor that’d have Redd safe and Lohn on the outs where she belonged turn out to be unnecessary when Lohn hears the news.

Georgie Harold is going with Winifred “Redd” Mullaney. 

It ain’t the hangover that has Lohn kneeling over the porcelain throne when she should be in first period, but it is the excuse she gives herself before cutting class. 

Georgie _fucking_ Harold, with his greasy hair and back acne, touching _Lohn's_ Redd with those nail-bitten hands - 

The worst part isn’t that it’s the last guy Lohn were with, no. It’s that, when Lohn catches glimpses of the two of them together, Redd looks - 

It’s not important. The important thing is that Redd is safe from rumors, from _Lohn_. She deserves to be - to be normal.

Lohn never expected Redd to be _happy_ doing it, though.

–

“Well if it isn’t Lohn Lightning herself.”

The voice startles Lohn out of the bottle she’s been applying herself to after finishing her set. It’s the first time she’s had someone really recognize her in this hellhole despite announcing her name for anyone to hear with the increasingly gloomy sense that she’s been forgotten. She - she can’t exactly pretend to be surprised, as it’s been twenty years since she cut and run and just kept running, but she knows herself, and knows she woulda liked to leave more of an impression.

Smirk in place, Lohn unsticks her forearms from the bar she’s been hunched over and turns. 

All the surgeons in the world couldn’t have kept Lohn’s scarred heart bursting open when she finds none other than Redd Mullaney propped up on the stool beside her.

“Oh shit,” Lohn sputters, then to her shock, blushes and apologizes. “I mean - pardon my language - ”

Redd’d always been sensitive to that kinda things, when they were kids, but based on the way Redd throws her head back and laughs it’s something Redd’s grown out of. She certainly ain’t a kid anymore. Where Lohn’s memories of the girl she’d run from are of long hair, freckled skin, this woman’s curls are cropped around her ears and the arms on display are soft, smooth. There’s crows feet around her eyes, too, and deep lines framing that same distracting mouth. Her cute buckteeth are gone, though, straightened out by braces Lohn knows her family couldn’t afford way back when, but the sleeveless blouse Redd’s wearing is new and gorgeous and can’t of come cheap.

Lohn’s eyes drop to Redd’s hands without her say-so and her chest cracks open completely at the sight of the pretty stone flashing on her ring finger.

“Shit,” Lohn says again, then scrapes up every bit of strength the miles and years away have afforded her and rallies. “How you been, hun?”

Redd doesn’t stop smiling at the old endearment, even if it makes Lohn cringe, and her voice is warm and comfortable when she answers.

“Good, they’ve been good. You remember George?”

“George,” Lohn echoes, keeping her rictus grin in place. “Of course.”

“We got hitched - what, eighteen years back? Got a little house down by the river.”

“Sounds nice,” Lohn manages. “Y'all got kids?”

Redd’s smile doesn’t waver, but she blinks a few times before shaking her head.

“Naw, that life ain’t for us. He got a job as a trucker right out of school and there weren’t much time for trying, and I - ” Redd’s tongue pokes out between her lips before she shrugs. “What about you, ma'am? You’re still singing, I see.”

“Yeah,” Lohn says, breathless with wondering what it is that Redd’s left unsaid. “I’ve uh - been travelling, you know, touring.”

“Oh yeah?” Redd’s green eyes are sparkling; Lohn is dying. “You a big shot musician like you always said you’d be?”

Lohn extends her arms, gesturing to the dingy, half-empty hole in the wall she’d managed to get to host her for the evening.

“Living the dream,” she confirms, smirking as best she can while bleeding out. 

Redd laughs. Lohn ain’t sure if it’s because she thinks Lohn is joking or she knows Lohn ain’t until Redd’s hands land on her knees.

“Let’s keep the dream going,” she suggests, standing. “Come down to the river with me, Lohn Lightning.”

Redd doesn’t use the word _home_ , but Lohn knows that’s what she means.

–

The cow pasture ain’t a cow pasture any longer, but Lohn recognizes it by the route they take in Redd’s Tiffany blue pickup. There’s a winding gravel drive through the trees they used to sneak through and where there used to be an electric fence there’s nothing more sinister than white pickets.

“This is where you live?” Lohn says as she realizes it. When she turns to look at Redd, there’s that same ghost of a smile crinkling Redd’s eyes up.

“We built the house a while back,” she says lightly, like Lohn ain’t gaping beside her. “George knew I had my heart set on it.”

Lohn can taste copper when she sniffs, the open wound that never healed right bubbling up her throat.

“Redd,” she says, soft.

“Let me show you around,” Redd says, more loudly, and Lohn swallows down her heart and slides out of the truck.

It’s a pretty thing, the house, though Redd says it’s smaller than they dreamed about what with only the one bedroom. Lohn bites the question back the same as she had at the bar, unwilling to interrupt Redd’s happy chattering as she shows Lohn the garden and the kitchen and the living room. She’s breaking into pieces as she watches the woman Redd’s grown into and there’s nothing Lohn can do to hide the way she’s increasingly close to collapse.

“But my favorite part is out back,” Redd says as she glides through her very own fairytale; Lohn is helpless to do anything but follow her out the door and down the stepping stones Redd has to point out to keep Lohn out of the mud.

Lohn hears it before she sees it: the river.

“Redd,” Lohn says again, shattered. There’s enough moonlight to make out every faded freckle on Redd’s face when she turns around.

“Lohnnie,” Redd says, finally, mouth trembling around her smile. “Would you go swimming with me?”

Redd’s beautiful, guitar-playing hands are already working at the buttons of her blouse and there’s tears in Lohn’s eyes and there’s not a force in the blessed green earth that can keep Lohn from stepping forward to close the distance Lohn’d forced between them.

“I’d like that,” Lohn confesses, at last. “I’d like that more than anything, Redd, shit, you know I always - ”

Redd abandons her top to get her hands in Lohn’s hair, tug her that last little bit, quiet the admission that should’ve never had to be said with a touch from the mouth Lohn’s been dreaming about.

“I’ll race you,” Redd says against Lohn’s lips sometime later, like she isn’t halfway undressed already. She’s smiling again, sweet and perfect, and Lohn don’t know what tomorrow’ll bring but for now, she’ll do what she shoulda done all those years ago.

She’ll take what she has and run with it. 

**Author's Note:**

> come find me at egocentrifuge dot tumblr dot com for commission information and more fic! i don't generally post works under 1k to ao3, and believe me, there's a lot of them, as well as various longer but unfinished series.


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